This week, the 2012 EMP Pop Conference hits New York City. They write: “What do you get when roughly 300 academics, journalists, and musicians gather to talk about music and the urban jungle?… The participants will explore sounds of the city–the reverberations of people gathered en masse. . .Presenters will pay particular attention to what … Continue reading EMP 2012: MUSIC AND THE URBAN JUNGLE

It’s like this: tonight, Thursday, I will read at the Best Music Writing 2011 event @ Housingworks in Manhattan. Free. Hosted by the New Yorker’s Alex Ross and Daphne Carr, who included my Frieze essay on slowness in music for the book’s 2011 edition. Flyer below. On Friday and Saturday I’ll be shaking things up … Continue reading BEST MUSIC WRITING & WEST COAST DJING

Last night’s Samuel Delany Times Sq Red, Times Sq Blue Book Clubb meeting was very nice. In attendance were two filmmakers who have spent significant time shooting in Times Square itself! There was Julia Loktev: her netflixable Day Night Day Night (2006) follows “a 19-year-old girl who prepares to become a suicide bomber in Times … Continue reading TIMES SQUARE READ

A few days ago I came across the first mention of Auto-Tune I’ve seen in fiction: Lauren Beukes’ 2010 novel, Zoo City. It’s weird noir, set in contemporary Johannesburg, featuring an ex-junkie protagonist named Zinzi December and her magic sloth. The unconvential pair is caught in a web of intrigue involving murder, 419 email scams, … Continue reading ZOO CITY: ON SLOTH, AUTOTUNE, & AFRICAN NOIR

welcome to Mudd Up v1.9! This probably doesn’t look good if you are using IE (in which case you should switch to Firefox). But maybe it doesn’t look good anywhere…So let me know if anything is weird with usability or RSS feeds or whatnot, and i’ll apply my caveman coding skills in attempts to fix/improve/destroy … Continue reading WELCOME TO THE NEW MUDD!